Yes!
Yes, and this was one of the three reasons for bindings being a thing.
1.) So that sacred artists can inherit techniques from the spirits of their fallen masters/predecessors.
2.) So that Soulsmiths can use techniques as materials.
3.) So that rivals on similar/compatible Paths could potentially kill someone possessing a remarkable technique and steal that technique.
What is your favorite book you've written
Of Dawn and Darkness
Why?
For real though, one of my favorite activities is logging into Reddit writing prompts or one of my online stories that still has a following and writing "There will be an update soon." And then never releasing an update. It keeps them all in suspense.
You can tell that I wrote it because I also used the name "Aru" on that site. Gotta warn you though at this point I was still embracing the "Show, don't tell" to an extreme extent, so the first 50k words takes place over two-ish days.
That happens all the time. "Show, don't tell" has become one of my least-favorite pieces of advice; now my left eye twitches whenever I hear someone say it. First of all, most people don't understand it. What it should mean is "In a story, don't simply tell me something is true when you can show me that it is true." For instance, don't tell me a character is brilliant when you could instead show them doing something brilliant. You want to get the reader to think "Wow, this character is brilliant" without you having told them so. People generally use it to mean "Show us when something happens, don't tell us." This is dangerous because it's both good advice and bad advice. It's a double-edged sword. When something is important or integral to the story, you always want to show it happening in a scene, rather than telling us that it happened in narrative. "Lindon fought a dragon and won" isn't nearly as interesting as a fight scene between Lindon and a dragon. But there are always scenes that you should be telling instead of showing. "Winter passed without incident" is a much better way of summarizing a boring winter rather than ten pages of summarizing boring training and nothing happening, even though the first one is telling you that nothing happened and the second one is showing you that nothing happened. TL;DR - "Show, don't tell" is both so broadly applicable and so frequently misused that it's almost useless except in certain specific circumstances. So even though it's good advice, IMO it confuses new writers more than it teaches them.
Got 384 pages into it too before I ended up stopping. Part of that was because I improved so much while writing it that the beginning just felt like a hunk of junk. And also because my sense of pacing was waaay off.
Always true. Part of finishing a book is just getting to the end so you can go back and fix the beginning. You usually don't know what your story is about until you finish the first draft. Which is what makes writing serial stories one chapter at a time hard
One of the most common problems new writers have is starting way too early. That happens all the time.
That is, as long as I don't accidentally scrap it and start over again. Sigh. Stories get harder as they reach the actual length you expect them to be.
That's the truth
Are there any sacred beast only villages?
Yes, and hopefully you will get to see an example very soon.
I'm bad at emojis
Oooohhh are there any sword related sacred beasts? And do you have plans for us to see them?
Yes to both, hopefully.
Haha, Sage=special ranked up soulfire confirmed
I did not say that. I said Sages live longer than Archlords, in general.
Will, have you read Overlord or watched the anime adaptation?
I'm honestly a little confused by all the LitRPG questions, but I'm cool with answering anything. And I'm not against the concept of LitRPGs in general, I've just never read one that really grabbed me. Which makes me want to try and create one I do like.
Word of Will response to :That's a different take on it than I had. At this point, I'm not considering Lindon's personal growth as much as his team's. You've got the sword master with what I assume will eventually be 6 sword arms sticking from her back, the strategist with no outstanding combat strength, and I'm thinking Jai Long and Jai Chen, as well. Overwhelming destructive power was actually missing from their group. Besides that, Lindon's second core is the air of mystery and the unexpected for me. Curious what he's really able to do with it later.
"You've nailed my thought process. My priority is to balance his eventual team more than Lindon as an individual."
How are everyday tasks handled?
Different places in the world handle the basic necessities of life differently. Some places have sects that focus entirely on farming or whatever, but other places prize independence and self-sufficiency. Those sacred artists value the ability to provide food, resources, and basic societal infrastructure for the people that depend on them.
Would a fire path be one of the fastest way to level up? All you would have to do is stand next to a barn-fire and absorb the ambient fire manna it would give off, then refine it. On that note how different would the manna type be, between different types of fire. A hearth-fire warming a family home in the winter, with all the "happy" connotation that come with it, compared to like an arson attack destroying someone's home and possession and just everything that they have worked for. Both are fire but you get what I mean.
A fire Path would not be the fastest way to advance, because the aura would be slightly rarer and harder to collect compared to, say, earth or air. But it's still very fast, as are all the Paths that draw from aura easily found in nature.
There WOULD be significant differences between those two Paths! Fire from different Paths could take on different qualities depending on how it's used an where it comes from; you could have a gentle flame that spreads slowly and provides lots of even warmth, versus a violent flames that consumes rapidly and burns out quickly.
